"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description," Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness. "I dare say she prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
"But—but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture, "do you call this person a good match?"
"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless reply.
"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery, the others following at a safe distance.
The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most interested in keeping them in the dark. But now that the new-found peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager determined to let the cat out of it.
"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct and penetrating tones. "It is getting late."
As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.